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Monday, April 12, 2010

In my opinion the person who asks such a question is deceived already. God does not have THAT KIND of will for your life. God does not care if you take this job or that job. The options before you are not made up of selections only one of which is the will of God and you have to figure out which one that is. Your life is before you and there are many options. YOU ALONE MUST CHOOSE FOR YOURSELF WHAT YOU WILL DO!

The only thing that can help us to make good decisions is to learn wisdom. Make decisions and accept responsibility for those decisions and pay close attention to how they work out or don't work out so that over time you can make better and better decisions as you develop a better ability to predict likely outcomes.

The will of God for your life will never be a bypass to learning wisdom. God's will has more to do with the quality you bring to the process when considering options. God cares a great deal about the love and ethics you bring to bear in that consideration and cares not a wit about what that decision ends up deciding. God cares about the quality of the process. A quality process will often make mistakes but wherever a quality process ends up, that will be a good enough place to be in until it is time for the next decision.

But is it exactly where God wants you to be? The question is irrelevant because the only place God wants you to exactly be in is in Christ. Everything else - absolutely everything else - is optional. So long as you can have a relationship with God in Peru, you can move to Peru if you decide to. There will be consequences to that decision and to a reasonable degree you should consider what those consequences might be and make your decision based on the consequences you are willing to risk.

Sad to say, but for some people and for some periods in history the options are very bleak. What is God''s will for a person sitting in a concentration camp, or an electric chair? What is God's will for a person growing up in a ghetto whose subculture is abused and discriminated against? What about the person growing up in some obscure jungle? There are not very many viable options for such people. Many of them will suffer and die early no matter what they do.

People looking for the will of God are setting themselves up to be manipulated by those who think they know how YOU can find God's will. They are being set up to pursue the difficult decisions in life using a style that will forever sabotage the development of learning to make good decisions for themselves wherever they actually have the freedom to choose. Freedom to choose means personally taking responsibility for the potential outcomes of those choices inasmuch as they can be reasonably predicted.

It is a lie that God has a will for your life that includes ANY decision where you have to figure out what God's will might be. In that rare moment where God has a decision He wants you to make, it is God's problem to make His will clear. So, if God does not appear to you in a dream or a vision or send a profit or an angel to tell you which option to take, you are on your own.

There is no such thing as a decision God wants anyone to make where God has not been totally clear as to what that decision is. Until such time as God makes it absolutely clear, do not abdicate your responsibility to make your own decisions.

Friday, April 9, 2010

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

These verses speak to me of the person of Christ taking preeminence over the scriptures AND the universe. I am committed to the idea that all truth is authoritative. To interpret one truth in order to dismiss another truth is a commitment to being silly and ignorant. Truly - ALL interpretations are straw men. Let God be true and EVERY MAN a liar.

It is foolish for Christians to pit the bible against science. You can only lose. If you are not careful you might lose your faith when all you really need to lose is your interpretation.

It is foolish for the scientist to pit science against the bible. The only way you can do that is to adopt the straw man interpretation embraced by Christians. You will destroy the opportunity of faith and violate science because a scientist has no business substituting a straw man for the real thing. What the bible is and how the bible is understood ARE 2 very different things.

Sorry to be the bearer of what only seems like bad news. But we are all lost in a puzzle that no one has found the solution to. Finding God is like finding and taking possession of the envelope inside of which is the solution to every mystery. Yet upon opening the envelope we discover it is written in a language we are only beginning to comprehend.

Who is the Unconventional Pastor?

Bob Greaves is a musician and professor of Media Arts teaching music software and Sound Engineering in the Southern Tier of New York State. He also does a Sunday and Wednesday show called "The Unconventional Pastor on Ustream for the New Covenant Group.